Davos as a Thinking Space for What We Become

I was inspired by a personal vision board last week. Not by grand words. Not by promises. But by images, and the possibilities connected to them. And with that, a simple, almost naïve question emerges: What of this is hope, and what is actually possible? Not as a vision. But as a litmus test. I am writing a new chapter in my life. Not about what we do, but about who we become when technology no longer merely changes our actions, but our very self-understanding.

The Human of Tomorrow in the Swiss Mountains

This morning, I am on my way to Davos for the annual World Economic Forum. This year’s guiding theme is “A Spirit of Dialogue”—an attempt to open a shared space for thinking about the future amid fragmented markets, geopolitical power shifts, societal upheavals, and exponential technologies.

Davos is often contradictory. Between media spectacle, political staging, and economic interests, it can feel absurd at times. And yet: what is negotiated here about economics, technology, and politics influences how people act, decide, and set priorities. It therefore always concerns the conditions of human life itself.

As technology increasingly becomes the foundation of how we perceive, decide, and create, one question moves to the center—one that cannot be delegated: What does it actually mean to be a Mensch?

tomorrowmensch — today

Out of this inner drive for understanding, tomorrowmensch was born, as a twenty-year experimental field. An entrepreneurial, philosophical, and scientific thinking space in which we explore, over time, what human existence might mean when technological developments no longer merely support the human being, but potentially replicate it.

My personal ambition is paradoxical—and consciously so: to build a Mensch, carried by the romantic idea of failing in the attempt.

This paradox marks the core of tomorrowmensch. It is about insight. About the boundary between what is technically reproducible and what remains beyond our grasp. As technical systems increasingly simulate everything we have long attributed to humans, it becomes visible what we truly know about being human, and what we do not.

This is precisely why this problem of knowledge belongs in places where the future is negotiated. Davos is one of them. Here, political power, economic decision-making, and technological visions converge. What is discussed here—from artificial intelligence to quantum technologies to biotechnology—shapes expectations, investments, and narratives far beyond Davos itself.

WHERE OUR FUTURE IS WRITTEN_

And here we return to our capacity to imagine the future. Visions, plans, goals—even vision boards—arise from a deeply human impulse: the desire for perception. Perception of the world, but also perception of our own perception. Progress is never linear. It is shaped by emotions, setbacks, detours, and experiences that make up a human life.

Writing the future could therefore also be described as a form of conscious living—as a movement along the boundary of what is possible. But where exactly does this boundary lie?

More than ten years ago, I read David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity. Deutsch argues that we humans are fundamentally capable of producing ever better explanations of the world. Progress is possible. In principle. And yet here, too, the decisive question arises: Where does this infinity end?

tomorrowmensch begins precisely where technological developments touch the foundations of autonomy, responsibility, and human self-understanding. In selected conversations and encounters, I want to dedicate the next twenty years of my life to these questions—dialoguing with people who actively shape the conditions of our future.

Davos negotiates the future.

I can imagine no better place to begin this new chapter than this moment, under this year’s “Spirit of Dialogue.”

Perhaps Davos is less about answers than about responsibility.

tomorrowmensch does not focus on the future of technology— but on the future of the Mensch.